Evaluation of feeding different forms of therapeutic diet on the feed intake, digestibility, feed efficiency, and growth of calves experimentally infected with foot-mouth disease virus

Oral ulcers induce acute weight loss due to anorexia in foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) infected cattle. We hypothesized that providing a palatable form of a therapeutic diet (TD) in different physical forms would increase the feed intake, digestibility and restoration of body weight. A TD was formulated with 19% CP and 2.9 Mcal ME/kg on dry matter basis. Bull calves of 10–12 months with mean body weight of 123 ± 1.3 kg were experimentally infected with FMDV ( n = 18) and offered one of the following three forms of the TD ( n = 6/group) for 6 weeks post-FMDV infection (WPI): (i) TD in mash form (TD M ) (ii) TD in cooked form (TD C ) and (iii) TD C + customised nutrient supplement (TD CNS ) such as Zn, Cu, Cr, Mn, and Se. The CNS was fed before the TD C. A group of uninfected control ( n = 4) was fed TD M. Green fodder was offered in the afternoon. Dry matter intake (DMI) of TD and green fodder were recorded at 24 h interval till WPI 6. Body weight (BW) was recorded at weekly interval. Digestibility trial was conducted at WPI 6. The palatability of the TD was scored from 1- 4 and healing of tongue ulcers was analyzed by Kaplan–Meier survival curve. The results indicated that the physical form of TD increased the total DMI by WPI 3, which was supported by the restoration of BW and higher palatability score. The digestibility of all the proximate principles except EE was significantly higher ( P